The Non-Professional Actor
Italian Neorealist Cinema and Beyond
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published:14th Dec '23
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
An examination of the actor, and the non-actor, in post-war Italian cinema—a crucial moment for the Italian film industry—when cinema became an important vector of national identity and of individual identification with figures on the big screen.
Provides the first critical overview of acting, stardom, and performance in post-war Italian film (1945-54), with special attention to the figure of the non-professional actor, who looms large in neorealist filmmaking. Italian post-war cinema has been widely celebrated by critics and scholars: films such as Bicycle Thieves (De Sica, 1948) and Paisan (Rossellini, 1946) remain globally influential, particularly for their use of non-professional actors. This period of regeneration of Italian cinema initiated the boom in cinemagoing that made cinema an important vector of national and gender identity for audiences. The book addresses the casting, performance, and labour of non-professional actors, particularly children, their cultural and economic value to cinema, and how their use brought ideas of the ordinary into the discourse of stars as extraordinary. Relatedly, O'Rawe discusses critical and press discourses around acting, performance, and stardom, often focused on the ‘crisis’ of acting connected to the rise of non-professionals and the girls (like Sophia Loren) who found sudden cinematic fame via beauty contests.
A brilliant and comprehensive exploration of the role of the non-professional in Italian and world cinema, this book is sure to become indispensable reading for anyone with an interest in realist cinema as well as casting, acting and stardom. * Stephen Gundle, Professor of Film & Television Studies, University of Warwick, UK *
Catherine O’Rawe’s book offers a compelling counter-history of film acting through the disruptive figure of the non-actor. She excavates a myth of neorealism and its progeny — the idea that ‘authentic’ non-professionals, plucked from the street and projected on screen, can puncture cinema’s fakery and capture something of the ‘real’ — and gleans from it illuminating insights into children and stardom, voice and body, labour and performance, casting and reception, and much more besides. * Robert S. C. Gordon, Serena Professor of Italian, University of Cambridge, UK *
There are books that consolidate scholarly subjects and then there are those that basically design new research fields by combining scholars’ insights and findings. O’Rawe has given order to the study of the non-professional actor by enlightening its historical dimensions (from the colonial cinema of Fascist Italy and neorealism to the global present), performative patterns and theoretical affordances in a marvelously researched, remarkably argued and beautifully illustrated intervention. Her work will be the key reference for scholars in Italian and world cinema for years to come. * Giorgio Bertellini, Professor of Film, Television and Media, University of Michigan, USA *
ISBN: 9781501394355
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
264 pages